Overview of Season 25 of Doctor Who
Action at a Distance
In London 1991, safe-cracker and burglar Isabella Gates breaks into the house of a businessman, finding a strange alien artefact. Upon returning to her fence, he refuses to buy the artefact, as they cannot ascertain its purpose. Meanwhile, the newly regenerated Doctor lands in London, being found by passers-by, taking him to a hospital. The barely-conscious Doctor tries to explain that he must not go to a hospital, but is unable to escape.
The businessman returns to his home, finding that he has been burgled. He rushes to the cabinet that the artefact was in, finding it missing. Immediately, he calls an unknown party, telling them that “someone has taken the Shard”. He then shapeshifts, revealing himself to be a Zygon. Two other Zygons arrive, and they agree to track the signature of the artefact to find the thief.
The Doctor wakes in hospital, being offered some tea by a doctor. He takes it, but has difficulty in remaining conscious. When she tries to listen in to the Doctor’s heartbeat, she discovers that the Doctor has two hearts. Going to get help so that she can perform a full-body examination, the Doctor realises that he must get out of the hospital. He manages to escape through a window. The doctors return to the room, finding that the Doctor has escaped. They too reveal themselves to be Zygons, and begin to chase the Doctor down.
The Zygons tracking Isabella corner her and knock her out, carrying her to an unknown location. Meanwhile, the still disoriented Doctor is also captured by the Zygons, and taken to the same location. The Doctor and Isabella wake tied to chairs in the businessman’s house. They are interrogated, and Isabella starts to realise that the Doctor seems familiar to a story that her father told her about a strange man who saved his life from an aliens.
The Zygons reveal that the artefact is part of a larger machine that can be used to terraform Earth into a planet more similar to Zygor, their lost homeworld. While the machine is complete, it lacks a sufficient power source. The Zygons had planned to infiltrate UNIT and reverse-engineer technology for power, but with the Doctor’s TARDIS, they will be able to commence the plan immediately. While the Zygons work on the TARDIS, the Doctor manages to free himself and Isabella, and sabotages the Zygon terraformer. The Zygons return to subdue the Doctor, but the Doctor has called UNIT, who storm in and apprehend the Zygons.
The Doctor, now fully recovered from his regeneration, offers Isabella a place on the TARDIS after he realises that he was present at her birth, helping to deliver her. Isabella accepts, and they depart together in the TARDIS
The New and the Old
The TARDIS lands on Krass, a planet supposedly inhabited by a medieval-era society. When the Doctor finds them in the middle of an industrial revolution, years ahead of schedule, he suspects that alien influences may be at play. Soon enough, he finds an old enemy, with a new face. The Doctor and Isabella must try to find out why the Monk has taken an interest in Krass, and hopefully reverse the damage before it is too late.
Guest Star: Eric Idle as the Monk
Replay
The Doctor and Isabella arrive on Yarrick, following a repeating distress signal. Upon arriving on the planet, they find that the planet is stuck in a time loop after a disastrous attempt at creating a method of time travel. While at first the Doctor and Isabella appear immune to the looping effects, they slowly become integrated into the stream, as the Doctor tries to work with the inhabitants to reverse the effect.
Avatar
The TARDIS lands in Cornwall in 1927, where suspicion is rife. The locals speak of the dead rising up at night, and a cult has begun operating in the area, praying to an ancient Silurian god. The leader of the cult finds an artefact in the area and discovers that it is a piece of the god he worships. When the cult begins to use anachronistic technology to create a new body for the god, and bring about a new Silurian era, the Doctor and Isabella must act quickly to stop them.
For All Time
The Doctor and Isabella arrive in The Archive, a Matrioshka brain constructed in the far future to house the minds of distinguished humans who have died. The Doctor plans to consult an old friend, but soon finds that something is happening to the simulated world, and that an old enemy is using the processing power for his own gain. The Master plans to use the combined thought patterns of the best of humanity to create a supercomputer that can plan conquest on a hitherto unfathomed scale.
Guest Star: J.E.Freeman as the Master
Rassilon
The Doctor is summoned back to Gallifrey by the High Council of Gallifrey. They explain that the Key of Rassilon has been stolen by an unknown party that the Time Lords fear is using the Key to construct a Demat Gun to remove the Time Lords from history and develop time travel to conquer the universe. The Doctor tracks the Key down and finds the Monk working with the Sontarans to create a decisive end to the Sontaran-Rutan war. When the Doctor reveals that the Sontarans are actually planning to destroy the Time Lords, old enemies must work together to overcome a powerful foe.
Guest Stars: Eric Idle as the Monk
Michael Palin as the Time Lord Chancellor
Ab Urbe Condita
The TARDIS arrives in the Kingdom of Rome, during the reign of the last King, Tarquin the Proud. The people of Rome are close to an open revolt, but Tarquin is keeping them suppressed with the help of alien benefactors, who are masquerading as masked Roman soldiers. When the Doctor and Isabella are arrested for being present at a riot, they meet Lucius Brutus, who is to lead the rebellion. But when it becomes clear that there is more to the story of revolution than would first appear, the Doctor and Isabella must work to preserve history.
Remembrance of the Daleks
The Doctor and Isabella arrive in Shoreditch in 1963, where they are met by a military unit tracking abnormal magnetic fluctuations. They track one to Coal Hill School’s basement, where they find a teleporter linked to a Dalek ship in orbit. Another fluctuation comes from a Dalek in a nearby junkyard. Two factions are present, the Imperial Daleks loyal to the Dalek Emperor, and the Renegades, who go against the Emperor’s authority. Both sides search for the Hand of Omega, a powerful device that the Doctor hid on Earth when he first visited Earth with his granddaughter. If either side claims the Hand, then the Daleks will be able to develop time travel and get control of the universe. In order to keep the universe safe, the Doctor must risk revealing that there is more to him than he would admit to.
Shrine
The TARDIS arrives in Russia in 1865, where a circus is showing off the “Man with a Head of Stone”, which the Doctor recognises as a Lapidhom, a rare alien species. The Doctor and Isabella go to talk to it after the show. It explains that it, and others of its kind, are on Earth to search for their God-King. However, when they free the Lapidhom, the ringleader informs the military, who chase down the Doctor and Isabella, who join the quest to find the Lapidhom God-King.
Illegal Alien
The Doctor and Isabella arrive in Blitz-torn London, where they run into Cody McBride, an American expatriate. Cody reveals that he saw a silver sphere fall from the sky, which he believes to be a German weapon. Cody tells that the sphere opened, revealing a metal man inside, which the Doctor identifies as a Cyberman. When Cody also talks of a series of murders that have taken place, the Doctor decides to investigate to see if there is a connection.
Dark Time
The TARDIS receives a distress call from a planet that claims to be under attack from vampiric creatures. Upon arriving on the planet, the Doctor and Isabella find that there are Great Vampires that have taken control of the planet. The threat that the Great Vampires might return and attack Gallifrey once more is too great for the Doctor to leave this unattended, and he begins a resistance against the Vampires.
Love and War
The TARDIS lands on Heaven, a planet in the 26th century that is used as a graveyard by Humans and Draconians. The Doctor claims to be visiting to find a book, and during the visit, Isabella falls in love with Jan, an anarchist. However, the Doctor is opposed to the romance, and investigates far more than just the book he can to retrieve. This attracts the attention of young archaeologist Dr Rachel Vance, who begins to follow the Doctor to try to understand what his true motivation is.
At the end of the story, Isabella leaves the Doctor after he betrays her in order to save the planet. However, Dr Vance joins him, seeing that he is capable of great good.
Guest Star: Gillian Anderson as Dr Rachel Vance
Little footnote section here. Again, this is too big an update for me to do individual footnotes. This is probably the weakest season so far, from both an in and out of TL perspective. Had a bit of a harder time writing this, in part because I really wasn't feeling the Siddig-Hatcher duo. However, you may be able to see who the next companion will be. Dr Vance will be somewhat of a Bernice Summerfield expy, but only really in premise, rather than personality. I'll cover a little more on the casting later, probably when Season 26 comes round. It might not quite seem it yet, but there is are a couple of arcs that I've set up. One you will see the resolution of rather soon, another... it's a little further down the line. I'm trying to bring more of the classic monsters back into the show, in part because I'm not great at creating alien names.
Alright, little monologue over. Next update will be a quick summary of the Eighth Doctor, as I did for 6 and 7. After that, we'll take a bit of a break from Doctor Who and Star Trek (with one sort of exception). There's a good amount of music related stuff that has been written by @Drorac, and that should be coming up soon enough. As always, any questions, send them my way.
